T wrote:
Hi All,

I had a start when I saw this!

https://www.groworganic.com/collecti...ost-1-cubic-ft

"Note: While screened through a 1/4 inch mesh, this
green waste compost may still contain small amounts
of non-organic foreign objects (glass, metal,
plastic, wood, etc). Accordingly, always use gloves
when handling it. Furthermore, check its internal
temperature before amending with it to ensure that
it has cooled down enough for your purpose.

Use gloves! glass, metal, plastic, wood, etc!

Someone should have told them that beer bottles and
beer cans and left over cars parts DO NOT GO INTO THE
COMPOSTER!

Yikes!

the unfortunate things that happen to municipal waste. i've
seen it first hand. you do not ever want to take compost from
any facility without personally inspecting the load they are
bringing first.

that is why i largely stopped taking bags of leaves from
some people because of the crap that was in them. but it was
not the only issue i had because i had some compost delivered
and made the mistake of not inspecting it first. i'm still
picking glass, metal and plastic out of my gardens from that
10yrs later.

if you are looking for compost i suggest finding someone
who does tree and/or lawn services and asking them if they
have any wood/tree/shrub chippings and that if it was clean
you would be happy to take it for free or even to pay them
a small amount. since some of these places have to pay to
drop off materials in some areas this is often a good thing
for them.

the other approach is to find a wood/lumber mill type
place that does their own wood chipping. we've done a lot
of this the past few years and the quality is much more
predictable, but you lose out on variety of materials and
nutrition/trace nutrient content (because ground up green
bark and wood stuff and leaves means more nutrients and
also diversity).

i still will gladly take organic materials like chunks
of wood and wood chips and leaves from people here in
trade for garden goodies, but i always insist on inspecting
it first before they bring it and/or dump it.

once it's in a garden and if it is a mess then it is
way too hard to take it back out. same for weed seeds that
can be brought in.

properly composted though at a high enough temperature
the weed seed issue can somewhat be taken care of, but do
not count on that happening for each and every weed seed
so you do have to keep an eye on any garden you use any
new amendment on. this would be the same for any garden
you use new seeds on when they've been bought in bulk and
some weeds seeds may be in there.

ok, that's a lot to read, but i had a few minutes to
type. good luck,


songbird